With a net worth today of $1 billion, Joe Ricketts, 73, the founder of TD Ameritrade, is fretting over the crumbs falling from his table. It galls Joe that some of those crumbs might be used to help poor people in the country that facilitated his company’s phenomenal success.

Along with industrialist Charles Koch, investor Tom Perkins and gambler Sheldon Adelstein, Ricketts is another aging billionaire who believes America has let him down.

These well-heeled gents and others like them seek to purchase a government that will promote their self-serving agenda if it can’t be achieved through free and fair democratic elections.

These 1 percenters have a simple formula: tap ignorance and anger to convince the 99 percent to vote against their own best economic interests.

With the help of the right-wing media, these unhappy billionaires have achieved at least part of their objective. Try to name any meaningful legislation passed into law since Republicans took control of the U.S. House of Representatives nearly four years ago.

Inertia and government shutdowns serve Ricketts, Koch, Perkins and Adelstein as well as anything else.

Conservatism, as I’ve noted, is a political system founded on deception. It cannot survive in a true democracy unless it is supported by distortions, half-truths and lies. There’s no way, for example, billionaires can say, “Americans need to coddle people like us because …”

Like the others, Ricketts cowers behind front groups, pumping millions of dollars into right-wing propaganda campaigns to support the conservative candidates most likely to bend to his will.

Joe has to be careful. TD Ameritrade’s many customers who disagree with his extreme politics might take their business elsewhere.

Meantime, quaint notions of decency and honor have no place in Mr. Ricketts’ playbook. In 2012 he planned a racist advertising campaign against Barack Obama that stereotyped the president as a “metrosexual black Abe Lincoln.”

After the campaign was exposed, the ads never saw the light of day. Ricketts said he didn’t know anything about it.

Michelle Nunn is a thoroughly decent and honorable human being, born in Georgia and and bred in Georgia (before moving to Bethesda, Md.) to one of our state’s most celebrated families; a wife and mother of two who decided to run for the U.S. Senate because — get this — she wants to help Georgians.

Before that, Nunn led the volunteer service organization Hands on Atlanta, which later merged with President George H.W. Bush’s Points of Light Foundation.

“She is visionary, creative and a magnet for great people passionate about service,” said Neil Bush, the elder Bush’s son and chairman of the foundation.

Nunn comes by these attributes naturally. Her dad, Sam, is one of our nation’s most revered statesmen, a former U.S. senator who brought great credit on Georgia.

If she gets to Washington, Nunn will no doubt distinguish herself, too, working with the Senate’s bipartisan women to get things done for middle class, working and poor Georgians.

Voters are going to be inundated with all kinds of bogus GOP commercials this election cycle. You folks need to make darned sure your B.S. antennae are finely tuned.

There are Rickettses around every corner.

Kevin Foley is an author, writer and public relations executive who lives in Kennesaw.

Political discourse is not an "Assault" as the Nunn supporter alleges. I'm guessing you would like to put freedom of speech up for a vote as well?

The foundation of our Republic is the ability for individuals to express their opinion. Nunn has made it clear she will caucus with the Washington Democrats and Obama. Her views and positions will be subject to scrutiny whether you approve or not.

Wow, I can't believe how bad this piece of "journalism" is! Typical liberal rant, I might add -- mostly out of touch with reality and logic and such, but they don't usually bother with those stupid things anyway.

For starters, can anyone find any logical connection between the first 11 paragraphs (ranting about billionaires) and the next 6 paragraphs (about Nunn)?

And the guy who appears to equal conservatism with billionaires would teach us about truth and lies, distortions and honesty??? Last time I checked, George Soros is as ultra-left-wing as it gets, and he's not exactly barely scrambling for lunch money.

Space should be provided to point out the far greater number of billionaires supporting Democrat Party agenda's like carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is causing catastrophic global warming. Their solution is to ban fossil fuel use that will plunge the U. S. back to mid-19th century. All pain, no gain. Carbon dioxide form burning fossil fuels has an insignificant effect on climate(global warming).

In your article, you stated, "Try to name any meaningful legislation passed into law since Republicans took control of the U.S. House of Representatives nearly four years ago." Over 500 bills passed by the House are on the desk of Harry Reid who has withheld senate voting on these bills. So, no, there isn't any meaningful legislation that has been passed into law because of the obstructionist tactics of the senate majority leader, Harry Reid.

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